[Kstars-devel] On the popularity of KStars

[Akarsh Simha]

Sorry to reply to a very old thread now :)

> I quite agree with Bogdan.  Kstars maturity is also an issue when you compare 
> it to other programs free and commercial in all platforms.  Kstars is just now 
> at the beginning a full usable alternative to other programs.
> 
> I also agree with Akarsh that we need to look at our menu system to make it 
> more human friendly.  

> What is the Kstars mandate or statement of purpose?  It seems that we are now 
> leaving the world of education and entering the world of full featured 
> program.  In which case we need to define what we want to achieve, who is our 
> user base now and who do we wish to target in future.  We have beginner, 
> intermediate and advanced users.  What feature do we need to fulfil the 
> expectations of each group.  How best to we give each group what they need.

I guess the thing about free software is it gets pushed in the
direction of developers' interests. Personally, my interest is
deep-sky observation, so I tend to make KStars usable for my
interests. When I joined the KStars team, KStars had already developed
some tools for visual observers (eg: Observing List), so I think I'm
continuing that.

I think we should keep the focus of education, because KStars is
probably still the best educative astronomy app, although it takes
some effort to figure out how to use KStars to learn astronomy -- the
features are somewhat buried.

And personally, I think making a full-featured astronomy suite is the
way to go, because free-software for astronomy is very poor compared
to commercial software (compare with, for example, The Sky X or
MegaStar). It'd help to have all those features.

> Maybe we might want to think about being proactive in this summers Google code 
> thingie and see if we can attract some who not only codes but has some 
> experience with user interfaces.  Put posters out in our schools and 
> universities, post to our lists, encourage those people to apply for the 
> position... is that do able?

With Google Summer of Code these days, I'm worried that we are adding
features without caring to polish them to usable levels. But we
probably will try to participate again (Rishab and I have had long
discussions), although I think polishing existing features is a good
focus to have. Turns out that a prospective student plans to propose
exactly this, and I think that'll be good.

Regards
Akarsh